In general, silver halide color photographic materials are processed basically by means of a color development process and a de-silvering process. Thus, the exposed silver halide is reduced by means of a color developing agent to form silver during the color developing process and at the same time, the oxidized form of the color developing agent reacts with a color forming agent (coupler) to provide a colored image. The silver which is formed at this time is subsequently oxidized by means of a bleaching agent and then transformed into a soluble silver complex by the action of a fixing agent, the silver being dissolved and removed in the de-silvering process.
Strong demands have arisen in the industry in recent years for quicker processing, which is to say for shorter processing times, and particularly the shortening of the de-silvering process which accounts for about half of the processing time.
Disclosures concerning bleach accelerating compound releasing type couplers have been made in Research Disclosure Nos. 24241 and 11449, and in Japanese Patent Application (OPI) No. 201247/86, as a way of increasing bleaching power. It is known that de-silvering properties can be improved by using silver halide color photographic materials which contain these bleach accelerating compound releasing type couplers.
However, photosensitive materials which contain the said bleach accelerating compound releasing type couplers suffer from a pronounced worsening of the cyan image re-coloring properties when they are processed quickly in the de-silvering process.
On the other hand, there are various known cyan image forming couplers which are effective for improving the re-coloring properties of the cyan image (for example the ureidophenol type cyan couplers disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,333,999 and Japanese Patent Application (OPI) Nos. 207593/82, 204544/82, 11863/83 etc., the 5-amidonaphthol cyan couplers disclosed in Japanese Patent Application (OPI) Nos. 237448/85, 145557/86 and 153640/86 and, additionally, the diacylaminophenol type cyan couplers which are used in the field of color paper, etc.), and a 2-ureidophenol type cyan coupler which has a 4-cyanophenyl group, a type of cyan image forming coupler which is effective in terms of the re-coloring properties, is used in the examples of Japanese Patent Application (OPI) No. 201247/86 which concerns the above mentioned bleach accelerating compound releasing type couplers.
However, it has been found that there is a disadvantage in that a satisfactory minimum density cannot be obtained when 2-ureidophenol type cyan couplers are used as cyan image forming couplers. This disadvantage is especially pronounced when high speed processing is used, Thus, it does not give rise to the solution of the problem of shortening the de-silvering process. Furthermore, the diacylaminophenol type cyan couplers also undesirably tend to have a high level of residual color and increased minimum image density similar to that observed with the ureido type.
This invention is intended to solve the above-described problems, which arise with silver halide color photographic materials which contain bleach accelerating agent releasing type compounds.